In Part 1 of Curation for Educators I looked at why teachers and educators should become resource curators and some of the benefits. In this second article I'd like to look more at how to become a curator. How to become a digital curator So let’s look at what is involved in the curation process.

Kim Flintoff's insight:

In Part 3 of this series I'll look at some examples of curated resources and also suggest some possible platforms that you could try.

Abstract In today’s hypermedia landscape, youth and young adults are increasingly using social media platforms, online aggregators and mobile applications for daily information use. Communication educators, armed with a host of free, easy-to-use online tools, have the ability to create dynamic approaches to teaching and learning about information and communication flow online. In this paper we explore the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. We present a theoretical justification for curation and present six key ways that curation can be used to teach about critical thinking, analysis and expression online. We utilize a case study of the digital curation platform Storify to explore how curation works in the classroom, and present a framework that integrates curation pedagogy into core media literacy education learning outcomes.

All academic research and argument has seven essential characteristics. It is formally stated. Each work contributes to an advanced and specialist conversation. And academic work tackles difficult issues. It forms part of a cumulative and collegial endeavour. Research is evidence-based, and its provenance can always be checked. Research is also demanding and consistent in assessing empirical ‘facts’. All these features mean that referencing and citing are vital components of academic practice. The decisions that scientists and academics make about including or not including citations to support their arguments play a very important role in conditioning how their colleagues regard and evaluate their work. The Figure below unpacks a bit further the reasons why citations are so important, set against the seven criteria mentioned above.

Arrange your saved items into stunning collections called wakes. Wakes can be public or private and created on any topic - share a passion, promote your business, or gather research. You can also make your wakes personal by adding notes, reordering items, changing layouts and much more.

In this way our role as librarians and archivists has outpaced our role as cultural consumers. Engaging with media in a traditional sense is often the last thing we do, that is (like my Feldman experience), if we ever get to it at all. In the digital ecosystem, the apparatuses surrounding the artifact are more engaging than the artifact itself. Management (acquisition, distribution, archiving, filing, redundancy) is the cultural artifact’s new content. Context is the new content.

“Publishing” has assumed a large role in discussions of how scholarship is changing. One reason is that, in these discussions, the mechanisms of publishing come to stand in for the larger and more complex processes of creating, vetting, and circulating knowledge. Some of the sense of unmet need that arises in considerations of the emerging, alternative publishing methods for those working in digital humanities comes from the problems with this shorthand.

Because the best way to learn something is not by memorizing facts, formulas, numbers or dates as we are taught since elementary school. The best way to learn anything is by diving into it.

When you memorize something, all you do is imprint that fact or info into your memory in a way that can be easily recalled. But memorizing that fact has nothing to do with actually “knowing”, which entails your understanding or comprehending of why that fact it is the way it is.

Although Stephen Fry has left Twitter, the popular British actor and writer hasn't given up on social media altogether. Numerous sources have reported that Fry is involved in an education start-up being pitched as a "Pinterest for education." Pindex allows teachers, students and anybody else to create online pinboards for collecting "the best educational material."

A "board" in Pindex parlance is a collection of content — images, video and documents. To add content to their boards, users get a bookmark button from the site and then click it as they browse the Web to capture a specific image and link. Educators can post quizzes to their boards or "completion awards" that visitors can earn by getting 100 percent on the test or checking each post on the board

Peter Mellow's insight:

April 6th 2016 - To date, I have found Pindex very disappointing as a potential education tool. A very limited toolset, perhaps better suited for a school audience or the general public. Hopefully they will take feedback on board and add some of the features that are missing.

There is a lot of learning content out there. Do we really always need to create more new content or can we just help people get to what already exists that can be valuable to them? This is of course called Curation and it is gaining interest as content proliferates and yet at the same…

Content curation has been listed as a future skill needed for L&D people. But how do we curate? What should we use and what should we discard?

There is so much information available to us on the web. We have a struggle to manage the deluge of data. The volume of video data is enormous, with figures suggesting 72 hours of video is uploaded you YouTube every minute (many of it silly cat videos).

"Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant" - Mitchell Kapor

The concept of digital curation has evolved from its original use. While the digital preservation of artifacts is still the primary domain of digital curation, due to Web 2.0/social media applications it has allowed anyone to easily create a topic centered library online to share with the world. Assets found online can now be quickly collated into a visually appealing web site using freely available tools. This descriptive paper explores the potential use of digital curation within three tertiary institutions.

Linkrot “also known as link death or link breaking, describes the process by which hyperlinks (either on individual websites or the Internet in general) point to web pages, servers or other resources that have become permanently unavailable”.(Wikipedia) It should be a responsibility of the whole human civilization to preserve our digitized information in a safe and reliable matter or we risk losing much of our history, knowledge and data. And that’s where curation plays a very important role.

Whether students choose to handwrite, sketch, or type their notes, the challenge lies not in choosing, but in creating a system that allows them to ultimately curate, synthesize, and reflect on what they learn..

Teaching curation skills means teaching critical thinking as part of the note taking, and information gathering process. You can weave this skill into any curriculum you teach. You serve your subject area as you build thinking skills and implement standards.

Who can now deny that, in the internet, we have the greatest educational tool ever conceived by mankind? Surely no Open Culture reader would deny it, anyway, nor could they fail to take an interest in a new startup aiming to increase the internet's educational power further still:

Peter Mellow's insight:

April 6th 2016 - To date, I have found Pindex very disappointing as a potential education tool. A very limited toolset, perhaps better suited for a school audience or the general public. Hopefully they will take feedback on board and add some of the features that are missing.

In recent months, we have witnessed the success of books and articles predicting massive shifts in the way students will experience and complete post-secondary education. Costs will be reduced and outcomes improved, writers argue, when higher ed is unbundled, meaning students pick and choose from a

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.